Why You Choose Your Thermostat Settings in the First Place

It's not exactly uncommon to hear that thermostat settings can cause trouble. “Thermostat Wars” are a very real thing, and people in the same household or workplace have been known to feud over their preferred indoor temperatures pretty much since thermostats first arrived on the scene.

Still, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ways thermostats can influence and reflect our behavior. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways your thermostat settings can tell a bit about you as a person.

Your Optimal Setting Reflects How You Were Brought Up

Did you know that you have a “thermal baseline?” It’s the thermostat setting that you genuinely feel that you’re most comfortable with, and there’s far more to it than just randomly-acquired personal preference. According to one study, it comes from your childhood, and the optimal thermostat settings you learned back then are still sneakily influencing your behavior today.

Yes, the settings you learned to know as “optimal” when you were a child eventually became an integral part of your temperature regulation behavior. In a nutshell, people who grew up in a situation where they had to wear a sweater indoors are likely to prefer similar low-temperature settings as adults. On the other hand, those who grew accustomed to more tropical settings learned to enjoy warmer indoor temperatures, and insist on thermostat settings that reflect this. It’s not just your experiences in your childhood home, either. The preferred settings in your friends’ and neighbors’ homes have all shaped up your ideas about thermostat use — so stealthily that you may not have even noticed it.

Amazingly, this implies that the Thermostat Wars are apparently multigenerational, and your stance in them says something about where and how you grew up. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, too. If you didn’t feel all that connected to the community growing up, you might be a complete rogue with thermostat settings.

Optimal Thermostat Settings May Also Stress You Out

Settling on a comfortable setting is good for your well-being, whereas home that are too hot or too cold can become actual health risks. However, even a person’s preferred temperature can become a source of inner turmoil. Two Public Health Wales surveys from 2022 and 2023 discovered that the participants’ stress levels spiked for months before the cold period arrived, because they were concerned about the cost of heating. Due to these worries, they ended up keeping their home colder than was comfortable.

Unfortunately, creative thermostat tweaking may not even be a particularly effective energy-saving strategy. According to a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, altering thermostat settings manually is actually the less cost-effective option in the long run. Many people either don’t have access to smart thermostats, are set in their habits, or are simply wary of the cost of comfortable thermostat settings. This leads them to either settle on one thermostat setting or change it manually according to the season, which generally leads to less comfort and more energy costs.

Since thermostat use and human behavior are so interconnected, it has been suggested that the energy consumption issues could be treated with better access to smart thermostats and more effective thermostat management education. Still, even if you take away the cost factor, everyone who’s fought a family member or a colleague over thermostat settings knows that attitudes can be hard to change when it comes to this particular subject.

Meaning it’s best for both your stress levels and bank account to plan for settings that everyone can live with, because you can’t change what people grew up with their entire childhood.

Newer Post >

Outdoor air conditioner unit with a rust-orange fan grille and side vents, beside a wall on a concrete pa

Is Your AC Fan Constantly Running?

By Lucas Novak • July 31, 2026

Is your HVAC fan running nonstop? Learn the common causes, from thermostat and airflow issues to dirty filters, and when to call a professional.

How Your Ceiling Fan is Like a Cheat Code for AC

By Lucas Novak • July 28, 2026

Did you know that there's a home appliance that you can use as a handy cheat code to make your AC work even better? And the good news is, you probably already have one: your ceiling fan. The combination of your AC unit’s cooling powers and the fan’s ability to move the air can make your home feel up to 4 degrees cooler than your thermostat setting. Here’s a quick look at how this works, and how using the AC-ceiling fan combo can save money. How Your Ceiling Fan Helps Your AC Unit Humans experience moving air as colder than still air, even if they’re technically the same temperature. This is why a ceiling fan’s air flow will feel comparatively refreshing even if it doesn’t actually cool the air; it’s also why wind chill is a thing. Now, take all that into account, and imagine that the ceiling fan is moving air that actually is cooler than the weather forecast says, courtesy of your AC unit. That, in a nutshell, is how the teamwork between your AC unit and your ceiling fan works. One of them brings the cold, the other simulates wind. Working by itself, your AC unit can be hard-pressed to distribute the air that it has cooled, and even if it can, simply filling the space with a relentless barrage of overly cold air isn’t necessarily a fun experience in the long run. Likewise, the ceiling fan alone isn’t going to do much when the weather gets hot enough. Combine the AC’s constant output of cooler air with the fan’s ability to move that air around, however, and you get a comfortable, evenly — distributed airflow that can feel roughly 4 degrees colder than it actually is — and you can adjust your thermostat accordingly. Using a Ceiling Fan/AC Combo Will Definitely Save Money So, about that thermostat. Apart from the pleasant coolness that the AC unit-ceiling fan combo can provide, keeping your AC settings a few degrees warmer than you otherwise would is going to have an impact on your utility bill. In all likelihood, your fan will only use a small fraction of the electricity that you save with that thermostat adjustment, too. There are obviously lots of variables on just how much money you might save. However, one study from Florida has found that the combined use of an AC unit and a ceiling fan for cooling purposes means that you’ll use around 14% less energy to cool your home — and that’s with keeping the thermostat just 2 degrees warmer than usual. Another study found that using the fan-AC system and adjusting the thermostat from 77 degrees to 80.6 degrees will reduce energy consumption by a cool 10%. As such, this is definitely a trick worth considering. There Are Downsides To Using a Ceiling Fan With Your AC Unfortunately, nothing in this world is perfect, and this trick isn't an exception to that rule. There are some obvious things to remember when using your AC and ceiling fan together. For instance, the fan should ideally be in the same room as your AC unit (in the case of a ductless system). And the location of the fan matters, since you wouldn’t want to spend the day sitting directly under a fan that’s moving cooled air any more than you’d like to spend it directly in front of a cold-blasting AC vent. There are other things to take into account, too. Unlike the AC unit, the ceiling fan has no filters, so it will happily spread around whatever impurities the air might have. Another thing your ceiling fan can’t do is dehumidify the air, so running your AC on a lower than usual setting can be a bad call whenever things are liable to get damp. Keeping all this in mind, though, your AC unit and your ceiling fan can form an excellent team during the hot months.

Open HVAC unit with V-shaped metal coils and wiring inside a cabinet

Recognize Refrigerant Leaks From Your AC Unit the Easy Way

By Lucas Novak • June 29, 2026

Hissing sounds, ice, humidity, weak cooling, and higher energy bills can all point to a possible AC refrigerant leak.

Contact Us